Thursday, February 02, 2006

January

The end of a month and the end of a quarter and so it seems like a good time to step back, a little, from the daily and weekly training routine and consider how the last months have gone. My initial 'plan' (in quotes because it was a plan only in name) was to go through the winter on about 50 miles a week, plus a bit of walking and some recces. In October, before stepping up the mileage my weekly average was 29 miles. Subsequent weekly mileages are -

December is skewed by Christmas & New Year, mainly by days walking in the Lakes rather than lazing about. During November & December I found the 55+ miles a week not too difficult and decided in January to push a little harder by adding a few miles on Saturday to get a minimum of 18 and then adding 10 or more on Sunday with dropping many during the rest of the week.

The way I feel at the end of this week is that 75 miles is just about my 'comfortable limit', perhaps a little beyond but by pushing a little bit harder, earlier than planned, I feel I have made more progress than anticipated and more importantly achieved it without injury. Mixing hard weeks with easy ones also seems to work and cuts out some of the routine involved in consistent weekly mileages.

It may seem a strange way of doing things but as my hardest run of the week and most races are on Saturday, Friday is the obvious rest day and if I add miles on a Sunday I can do them during the day rather than after work in a evening.